Unfortunately, I can’t read books as I do not have the patience to sit and read streams of words, page after page - I often end up falling asleep too.
I am very aware of Jason Fung and have watched a lot of his YT videos. I know of Joel Fuhrman too and have his ANDI index.
I just don’t know what vegetable fat sources are available, beyond tahini and avocados and nuts & seeds, which i eat a plentiful amount of already.
buy some keto cookbooks.and try to ENJOY your food. it won’t make you fall off the waggon-I think the contrary is true: if you dont enjoy your food then you will grab some candy and bread.
Flax seeds, chia seeds, and coconut oil will do the trick pretty cheaply. All three are very calorie dense. The first two have a decent amount of protein. Flax seeds can be ground in a coffee grinder and made into a kind of porridge, or purchased already ground as a flour. You could build a pretty simple diet around those 3 things.
I already eat a good amount of flax and chia seeds only a regular basis, grinding them and making a smoothie with hemp milk, adding cinnamon and vanilla.
I hadn’t considered making a porridge out of ground flax seeds, but will try it.
It sounds like you’re doing exceptionally well if you’re making it through 5 day fasts. What exactly do you want help with, fasting longer than 5 days? Motivation?
My goal now is to reverse my diabetes and I believe that because I am still technically overweight, I would like to get to about 165lbs to achieve the reversal.
I do not work and I spend almost all of my time at home, without really anything to do. I am on my own and do not socialize (as I don’t get much if anything out of it-have tried many times). Thus, I have no distractions.
This situation often leads to thoughts about food when I am fasting. Therefore, I’d like help to be able to do long or longer than 5 days fasting, to achieve the desired weight loss, without the seemingly ever present thoughts about food.
It doesn’t work this way. You can be 165lbs and have an abysmal A1C. The proven technique to lower A1C is to restrict carbs as much as possible. A vegan diet makes that dramatically more challenging. It’s absolutely possible to do it, it’s just more difficult.
I’ve done alternate day fasting, and I’ve done extended fasting. I’ve done both while vegan and I’ve done both while keto. ADF is easier with both diets. ADF with keto is the easiest of the four combinations. You won’t think about food nearly as much.
The most difficult thing you can possibly do is serial extended fasting on a vegan diet. That difficulty will increase with each subsequent fast, and it will increase as a bodyfat % declines. You’ve already experienced this! It’s not impossible, but it’s about the most difficult and counter-productive approach you could take. It’s counterproductive because with each drop in bodyfat % the more lean mass (as a percentage of total mass lost) you will lose with each subsequent fast. That’s my n=1.
This is tough. You sound sure about the animal food/human history question, but in case there’s any room for doubt in there: humans co-evolved with our technology. We’ve never needed the teeth and claws of most carnivores and omnivores because we’ve been using tools for millions of years, and there’s ample evidence stone tools and of the marks of those tools on animal bones at archeological digs. (We are clearly not evolved to live in extreme cold temperatures. We don’t have the thick fur or insulating blubber of seals or whales. Does it follow that the Inuits or northern Canadian or Siberian tribes are a figment of our collective imaginations?)
In any case, I don’t think you need to lose the weight to reverse the diabetes; you need to control your blood sugar to reverse the diabetes (which will likely then result in weight loss).
Usually we have trouble fasting because 1) we’re too lean 2) we have a psychological dependence on food or are worried about triggering disordered eating or 3) we’re not fat-adapted or for some other reason can’t access our fat stores while we fast.
Sounds like it would be the third reason for you.
You’re counting on getting B12 from the dirt around… what, from around your chia seeds? that’s one of the most dangerous myths from that recent vegan film. B12 deficiencies are no joke.
That is a great point! I keep thinking of cave paintings, which seem to depict humans hunting ruminant animals. My understanding is that eating meat enhanced our evolution significantly. As much as I would love to be vegetarian or vegan from a compassionate perspective, I don’t feel that it reflects the way that humans evolved and thus is not the ideal diet for us. I also note that the more that I have included animal protein in my diet, the more satisfied and energetic I have felt. I was a vegetarian for years and have attempted many times to eat a majority of plant-based foods, but I have come to believe that this is simply not beneficial to my health.
. . . But we cannot digest the plants properly so we eat the herbivores which can. You are setting some very high hurdles for yourself and I know I would also be struggling in your shoes.
Yes! This is the list of challenges from the posts above -
In reading through all of @magsilon’s posts, it’s the last one that jumped out to me the most. Someone who doesn’t do much of anything is going to have a hard time finding the motivation to make the necessary changes for good health.
Generally people are interested in reversing diabetes and improving health because they want to be more present in their lives for some purpose - to reach their goals, be of service to their community, experience new things, be present for loved ones, etc.
@magsilon, I think you need to take a close look at what’s often referred to as your “why” (your deeper motivation for wanting to lose weight and improve your health). Good luck to you!
Maybe your body just wants you to eat. You don’t know why, maybe it NEEDS energy and nutrients for any number of things. There is a lot more going on in the human body than our angst about fat.
I generally think, from the list that @Madeleine posted just above, that nearly every avenue to solution is boarded up here, unless one wants to live on protein powder, cheese, and MCT oil. I think that list just wiped out everything else.
I think probably at some point, numbers 3-6 are going to have to change at least a little. It’s one thing if it’s just a whim to eat keto. But when diabetic, letting all those things stand in the way of your doing it, is just indirect slow suicide.
The only way to fast successfully that I’m aware of from the medical professionals at the IDM clinic in Canada is to eat bacon and eggs with lots of butter until your sick of it.
Without the animal fat you will just be ravenously hungry when trying to fast at a later time.
I see this same issue cropping up over and over again about the difficulty of fasting years after doing it before, I wonder why that is?
What is fat fasting and when should you do it?
I did this Fasting Protocol for November, I am only doing TMAD, 20:4 for December,(although I just finished a 72 hour fast of only water and green tea and herbal tea -plain), but going back to this IDM Protocol for January again, the only difference I do is I do 44 hours, instead of the 42 they have, as I like to keep to my 20 hours fasting daily and Lunch at 1pm -supper at 4:30 no snacking in between. I have done that since June, and it works well for me. I am combining that with this IDM again for January:
I also make sure I keep to 20 net grams or less of carbs a day (often I have half of that or less), no sugar, no sugar substitutes, healthy fats, enough protein, lots of water, and electrolytes.
I did serial fasting (48-84 hours) back when I was experimenting with a high carb vegan diet. It’s not that bad. The tricky thing (for me) was that I could actually feel the “transition window” from burning carbs to burning bodyfat. The symptoms were low energy and brain fog. After the body throws the switch to fat burning however, it felt pretty much the same.
I switched to keto exclusively because the transition between food burning and fat burning was more seamless.